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For years, Claude Noel has been on the receiving end of players not good enough to crack the NHL.

Now he’s gone from being an AHL head coach, where he welcomed disillusioned players with open arms, to being the one who delivers the bad news.

For the first-year Winnipeg Jets boss, saying goodbye to his own former farmhands was the toughest cut of all.

“It’s all difficult,” Noel, the former Manitoba Moose coach, said of the 20 players reassigned to St. John’s of the AHL, Tuesday. “It’s a tough day. A Jason Jaffray, I feel for. A Marco Rosa, you feel for.

“We have a good relationship. The love isn’t gone from the relationship.”

Compounding matters, the fact a veteran like Jaffray is a better player than some of those still in Winnipeg.

“You might want to take a look at a younger player, a first- or second-year player that you don’t know,” Noel explained. “He’s 21 and we’re trying to get to know him, and Jason’s 29 and we do know him. So it hurts that way. He should be one of the guys.”

One part of the coach’s job hasn’t changed: convincing the demoted players to keep their chins up.

“The door will open,” Noel said. “Opportunity exists. You can’t drag around negative emotions that do nothing but drag you down. They get through the emotional roller-coaster of negativity as quick as they can, and then they move forward.

“Because we’d love to see them all back here. And those guys deserve it. They’re not far away.”

That was little consolation for most when, at 9 a.m. the first list of cuts was posted on the dressing room board. By 10 a.m., the second group of the day found out the same way, with a notice to go to the coach’s office.

“You feel for everyone in that situation,” defenceman Brett Festerling, one of the survivors, said. “We’ve all been there, and it’s never a fun day.

“I don’t think it matters who you are, anytime there’s cuts you’re going to be relieved when your name is not on the board. It feels good, but you still have to do more.”

As expected, first-round draft pick Mark Scheifele remained in camp, and will get a further chance to prove he belongs in a preseason game, Wednesday.

“Every day, it gets more and more comfortable, just getting more adapted to the speed,” Scheifele said. “If they’re stronger than you, you just have to play a little smarter, be more aware and just kind of outsmart them. At times I’m able to outsmart the bigger guys. I’m a little more agile. I’ve just got to keep working hard at it, keep adapting.”

The cuts leave 36 players in camp. Noel says he’d like to get down to 25 healthy bodies next week.